Dash (DASH) is a decentralised, open-source, digital cryptocurrency project forked from Litecoin in January 2014. Compared to Litecoin, Dash offers stronger transaction privacy and anonymity, while its software is more resistant to mining with specialist hardware. Better privacy is achieved through a technology called Darksend, a coin-mixing service that combines identical inputs from multiple users into a single transaction with several outputs which obfuscates the flow of funds. Dash has also developed and implemented a hashing algorithm called X11 which uses a sequence of 11 rounds of hashing for its proof-of-work consensus mechanism. To adjust mining difficulty over time, Dash uses an algorithm called Dark Gravity Wave, also developed in-house. The cryptocurrency project was formerly known as Darkcoin (DRK), but it was rebranded to Dash in March 2014. Original announcement.

DistroWatch.com - BitKey

BitKey is a FREE, Debian-based live Linux distribution designed for Bitcoin users; it comes with specialist utilities to perform highly secure air-gapped Bitcoin transactions. It contains a swiss army knife of handy Bitcoin tools that support a wide range of usage models, including a few very secure ones which would otherwise be difficult to perform. The system boots into one of the three available modes: "cold-offline" - for creating a wallet and signing transactions; "cold-online" - for watching the wallet and preparing transactions; "hot-online" - standard usage but less secure as the private keys are known to the computer which is connected to the internet.

ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is an integrated circuit customised for a particular use, rather than general-purpose use. In the world of cryptocurrencies, ASICs are frequently deployed for "mining" in order to accelerate the increasingly difficult task of generating new cryptocoins. Certain newer cryptocurrencies have tried to circumvent the ASIC effect by deploying improved hashing algorithms or enabling multi-hashing functions to increase the mining difficulty, but ASICs continue to evolve and adapt to newer technologies, especially if a coin's value rises high enough to make ASIC-powered mining profitable.

AEON developer "aeonix" has announced the release of AEON (AEON) 0.12.0.0, an open-source, decentralised cryptocurrency forked from Monero in June 2014. Like its parent, AEON uses the CryptoNight proof-of-work consensus mechanism and "ring signatures" to make any transactions private and untraceable. Code-named "Sophia", this version is a mandatory upgrade for all users: "This is a mandatory software upgrade due to the re-base of the AEON codebase to the latest master branch of Monero. The mainnet fork date is scheduled for June 3rd, 2018 (height 963,500). The following changes have been adopted: per-KB fees; allow miners to claim less money than allowed; claim a quantized reward in Coinbase and all outputs must be decomposed; require miner transaction to have well behaved outs; reject invalid public keys; use new block filling algorithm; forbid duplicate ring members; checks for top block hard fork version; reject unsorted ins and outs; CryptoNight variant 1...." See the complete release notes for further information and upgrade instructions. Download (SHA256, signatures): aeon-linux-x64-v0.12.0.0.tar.bz2 (29.9MB), aeon-mac-x64-v0.12.0.0.tar.bz2 (24.1MB), aeon-win-x64-v0.12.0.0.zip (31.6MB). The source code is also ready: v0.12.0.0.tar.gz (4.35MB).